BMI View: Incoming evidence of the economic damage caused by the Thai political crisis and our expectations that the political situation will not improve significantly over the remainder of the year have caused us to downgrade Thailand's GDP growth outlook for 2014. The Thai economy has weathered a series of economic storms in recent years (from the global financial crisis, to the Japanese tsunami, to devastating floods) and we do not expect the political crisis to plunge the economy into recession. However, when we combine the uncertainty posed by the political stalemate with the downbeat outlook for Thai households amid elevated debt burdens, and an impending slowdown in the country's main trading partner, China, real GDP growth seems likely to come in very weak, and we are forecasting a drop to 2.0%, from our previous forecast of 3.2%. As a result of this, we see downside risks to our food consumption forecast for 2014. Over the long term, however, we believe growth will be steady as the country's food and retail sector have huge potential.Headline Industry Data (local currency) ¦ 2014 food consumption growth (local currency): +6.4%; compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2013 to 2018: +6.2 %. ¦ 2014 per capita food consumption growth (local currency): +6.1%; CAGR to 2018: +5.9%. ¦ 2014 alcoholic drinks value (local currency) sales: +5.4%; CAGR to 2018: +5.3%. ¦ 2014 total soft drinks value (local currency) sales: +7.2%; CAGR to 2018: +7.2%. ¦ 2014 mass grocery retail (MGR) sales (local currency): +1.6%; compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2013 to 2018: +1.7%.